- “It's just a bunch of Hocus Pocus.”
- ―Max in regards to the Sanderson sisters
Maximilian "Max" Dennison is the main protagonist of the 1993 Halloween comedy-fantasy film, Hocus Pocus. He is a teenage boy who is shown to have hatred against Halloween. However, when he accidentally resurrects the Sanderson Sisters, Max and his friends forcibly hault their advances and stop them for good.
Background[]
Personality[]
Max is shown to be a youthful teenager and it is seen that he can become a gloomy teenager. He is shown to be stubborn, yet also brave and caring for others (such as with Thackery Binx's situation), determined, and intelligent (as shown as he tries to defeat the Sanderson Sisters).
Physical appearance[]
Max is a 15-year-old (according to the shooting script) teenager with brown hair and green eyes. He has fair skin and is seen throughout the film, first wearing a tie-dye shirt (much to his teacher Miss Olin's amusement) to wearing a brown jacket with a blue shirt and jeans.
Role in the film[]
At the start, Max is shown to be angry because he and his family just moved from Los Angeles, California to Salem, Massachusetts (according to a deleted scene, his parents moved because they wanted their children to be in a safe clean environment). He misses his friends and doesn't quite fit in with his classmates who believe in the supernatural mythology. One particular classmate he has a crush on is Allison.
Max is shown to rather dislike Halloween and does not believe in magic or the supernatural, believing Halloween to simply be an invention for confectionery companies to make additional profit. Thus, he is rather displeased at having to take Dani trick-or-treating, thus taking his anger out on Dani, causing her to become upset with him, but Max apologizes and she forgives him soon after. When visiting the Sanderson sisters' cottage with Dani and Allison, he cynically lights the black flame candle, disbelieving it will resurrect the Sanderson sisters, against Dani and Allison's warnings. However, he is shocked when his lighting of the candle does indeed resurrect the sisters and thus is forced to fight and defeat them before sunrise with the help of Dani, Allison, and Thackery Binx. He is shown to rather cunning when dealing with the sisters; he exploits their lack of understanding and knowledge of the 20th century and tricks them into believing he is a wizard who can summon "the burning rain of death" (in reality water from fire sprinkles) and that Allison's car headlights are in fact a sign of early sunrise. During the final battle in the graveyard with the sisters, in order to free Dani from Winifred's clutches, he consumes the life potion, making himself liable to life absorption. Just as Winifred attempts to consume his life force, she touches the hallowed ground of the graveyard and is thus petrified due to inherent unholiness, and is then reduced to green dust by sunrise, allowing Max to live. After the whole ordeal, he officially becomes Allison's boyfriend.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Max, Allison and Dani make a cameo in the sequel, during a flashback to 1993 when Gilbert witnessed the defeat of the Sanderson sisters, although they were played by uncredited extras.
- In the novel Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel, which is set 25 years after the events of the first film, Max and Allison are revealed to have married and had a daughter named Poppy.
